


shoot at him when he comes up for air

by thequeerwithoutfear



Category: Captain America (Movies), Daredevil (Comics), Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Autistic Character, Canon Disabled Character, Gen, actually scratch that i'm officially just saying that all the characters here are autistic, actually two autistic characters, if they're mentioned at all guess what they're autistic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-13
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 20:21:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8547820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thequeerwithoutfear/pseuds/thequeerwithoutfear
Summary: All Stark needs her to do is pay attention and take mental notes on how comfortable the wealthy jury member seems, the little cues and signs of something to hide. Anyone could do this job, but she’ll do it better. So will Matt Murdock.(Title from "Heel Turn 2" by The Mountain Goats — "throw my better self overboard / shoot at him when he comes up for air")





	1. Chapter 1

People generally thought that autistic people couldn’t lie, or couldn’t lie well. 

Natasha Romanoff was very good at lying. 

Natasha had grown up anticipating how others would respond to a situation, judging how to portray herself in order to succeed. She had taught herself how people were expected to behave because that was how she would survive. 

And then she was chosen for the Red Room. 

It’s easier for a spy to control a situation when they’re not bound to the same reactions as their targets. It’s easier for a spy to behave believably when their everyday behavior is already constructed to pass as neurotypical. And since identifying when people were sincere wasn’t a natural skill for her, she put it together by hundreds of little cues that most neurotypical people interpret automatically. The consciousness of that work made her an expert at picking out lies and spies and hidden information. 

Natasha operates like a spy every day. When not on a mission, she prefers not to speak much, prefers to show emotion less in facial expressions and more in her hands. But even interacting with people she likes very much she still has to speak and smile and hold to a certain tone, and it’s still like a job. 

(It’s not lying, to play the expected expressions. She’s noticed some people laugh when they’re intensely stressed, or hold their mouths in a grin when they’re in pain, but an actor wouldn’t show show stress by laughing, and neither would she. That’s not because that reaction or what it represents are faked, but because it’s better communication to do what the symbols say. 

Even if the role happens to be herself, she’s still playing a role. She’s like an actress, exaggerating expressions, reorienting behaviors, changing presentation to put the truth of her thoughts and emotions in a more universally understood context for a mark or for a friend.) 

But Matt Murdock… Murdock is different. Natasha’s met other autistic people before, can identify them by the same sort of cues she uses for neurotypical people. It’s like pulling out a new framework to work with, a new code, albeit one more distinct to each individual. But there’s something about him that throws her even with allowances for potential neurodivergence. He holds himself differently, moves differently. 

She thinks at first it may be his blindness that changes his behavior. It makes sense that someone who uses a guide cane will likely hold their hands differently when they walk, that someone for whom the facial expressions of others have limited social value won’t use them as extensively as a communication tool. But there’s also something in the musculature under his collared shirts, the callouses on his hands, something strange that catches on the survival mechanisms in her brain. 

She sees him first in the courtroom, the defense attorney on a well-publicized case. 

She’s in New York to visit Stark, of course. She’s been running circles around Stark Tower, stir-crazy and oversocialized after a taxing mission, so he’s thrown her out of the house with a job to do. She’s in court to watch a wealthy jury member Tony believes may be involved in a rash of organized crimes in the city, observing where he goes before and after the trial and how he talks to the other jury members. All Stark needs her to do is pay attention and take mental notes on how comfortable he seems, the little cues and signs of something to hide. 

Anyone could do this job, but she’ll do it better. 

Murdock draws her attention sharply as he stands to give his opening statement. She eyes his movement idly, his hands fidgeting on the grip of his cane. He turns towards the jury and tilts his head, listening, before he angles his head again and narrows his eyes behind circular-framed sunglasses, a bird to its prey. Something must stand out to him because he gives a curt little nod to himself, almost imperceptible, and shifts.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury…” 

The entire episode is so short in length that she doubts anyone else noticed, even Murdock’s partner, who sits nervously at the defense table, but even while speaking Murdock continues to respond to minute changes in the room. A juror’s eyes flicker shut for a second, close to dozing, and Murdock lifts his voice slightly, adds a pause and a sharper start to his next sentence to draw her attention again. He suppresses a motion, clenching and unclenching his fist at his side as an oily-looking man enters the back of the room. And seated back at the table, he gives careful attention to something Natasha can’t see. 

She texts Stark from her place in the audience. 

NATASHA: Tracked to court. Think your man may be working with def. Attorney. If not, no worries. Will check on your juror after (:  
TONY: pick up some cookies from Schmackary’s while you’re in the neighborhood, defense is Nelson & Murdock from Hell’s Kitchen.  
NATASHA: The great Tony stark can’t have cookies delivered? (;  
TONY: there may have been an incident. do not mention my name.  
NATASHA: (((((:  
TONY: you’re an enigma.  
NATASHA: (((((((((((: 

Natasha loves loves text messages. She can be playful and fun over text without it feeling like a chore, without having to switch on the social mode she dreads. That social mode will always feel like work, too close to the clever, careful manipulations, too close to losing herself in the clothes and the names and the faked feelings. 

She’s at work now, of course — for Tony, she thinks, or maybe officially for the Avengers, or maybe SHIELD through the Avengers through Tony, and what if HYDRA’s still behind that—?

_**I thought I** knew whose lies I was telling. I guess I **can’t tell** the **difference** anymore. ___

__She pushes back the sting of the sudden memory, the helplessness of once again not knowing, of once again not being able to tell the difference between a genuine smile and a forced one, between one face and the next, between truth and lie and joke, between motivations. _I guess I **can’t tell** the **difference** anymore. _ _ _

__The court drones on as she thinks, still watching Murdock as he listens to the prosecution’s closing, automatically cataloguing his gestures and the half-expressions she can see from her position in the audience. _I guess I **can’t tell** the **difference** anymore. _ _ _

She itches to be up in the rafters and his fingers pick at the edge of his sleeve like he wishes he could be up there too. 

_**I thought I** knew whose lies I was telling. I guess I **can’t tell** the **difference** anymore. ___

_I guess I **can’t tell** the **difference** anymore. _

_I guess I **can’t tell** the **difference** anymore. _


	2. Chapter 2

She doesn’t think the other one, Nelson, is involved in whatever Murdock seems to be based on his behavior. He talks wrong, big and open and loud, and doesn’t fit any of the criteria she had for suspicion even in the stress of court. 

Natasha trails them at a careful distance, taking into consideration the way Murdock had responded to the room – she’s alive because she’s careful, she’s survived because she always starts with an overestimate of potential threat. So she makes herself nonthreatening. She buys cookies for herself after they get coffee, puts herself ahead of them for a bit in case he’s reading for a simple follow and changes her posture and movement a bit when she returns. She plays music on her phone, jostles in her purse, avoids eye contact. 

In this part of the city, eyes up means tourist. Headphones off means tourist. Not walking hurriedly and mostly unlawfully means tourist. The figure she cuts is pissed off and harried and running errands, juggling coffee orders for the office and a frantic call to a friend and of course her cookie and all the while keeping Nelson and Murdock, Attorneys at Law, somewhere in the vicinity. 

They’re clearly good friends, cheerful, close, walking in sync. Close to the courtroom, they talk in low whispers about their case, tiredly wrapping up the day, but they start laughing loudly over old stories as they get nearer to where Google says their small office space is. 

Murdock and Nelson don’t go to the office, though. They stop together at the stoop of an apartment building across from a massive luminous billboard to go over plans for the next day and ensure they have the papers they need. Murdock rifles through a thick binder of what she assumes must be Braille files to ensure he has something specific before Nelson deposits him there and heads home himself, hooking in his earbuds and jamming out to an audibly loud “Drops of Jupiter.” 

Natasha doesn’t hesitate as she walks straight past Nelson, barely listening to Kate as she details the “sickening get-a-roominess” of Billy and Teddy, gulping down a coffee and ditching the rest in the lobby of a nearby office, wrapping up her cookie and shoving it in her bag before settling in for a bit outside the Thai restaurant nearby.

She’s gone in, ordered, and is halfway through a plate of pad thai and a halfhearted game of 1010! when Murdock walks through the door, papers under his arm. 

A good guess, then. He’d struck her as too busy to cook and too restless not to value the excuse to leave his apartment for a bit. She appreciated that he’d chosen this restaurant — her food was really good and she didn’t want to have to leave it. 

The waiters recognized him by sight. A regular customer — good. He would be more comfortable here then. 

Here, outside of the courtroom, he seemed less like a bird of prey, less honed. Seated across the room from her, he tapped his fingers aimlessly on the table, beating out a rhythm. 

She intended just to watch him for the evening, get a better idea of how he worked and moved, find out what might work in a play against him. There was still something about him she hadn’t quite put her finger on that she wanted to figure out well before trying anything. 

And then... _Shit._

He was tilting his head towards her, hawk-like again, as his fingers stilled. _Shit, shit._ She had been careless, somehow, she had been distracted, he was more than she had thought, he was onto her, how had he — _I thought I knew whose lies I was telling._

No.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for anxiety attack, brief moment of sensory overload

A moment later the bell above the door jingles and Nelson walks in, shouts loud to Murdock. 

Murdock relaxes a bit, smiling. He — he had been waiting for his friend. He had sensed his friend? Had known he was there, somehow, before he even walked in the door? Before Natasha had even seen him on the street, positioned where she was and on full alert? 

Natasha’s mind races as she considers and rejects potential methods for identifying someone through a New York crowd at that range from that position. In the courtroom, she had thought he must have an earpiece — someone with knowledge on the jurors and a set of cameras from different angles, five at least — but that wouldn’t explain this. 

Her heart rate steadies with each consideration, despite the rising threat level that each rejected conclusion represents. It’s not the lack of answers that calms her, but the process of studying the evidence, applying a specific framework to analyze it, repeating the analysis again and again, each time a little more precise, a little closer to solving the puzzle. 

To Matt, though, Natasha’s newly even heartbeat sounds like relief. 

He had been tracking Foggy, had smelled him, had heard him before he turned the corner onto his street, but the skyrocketing heartbeat of the person near the door as he turns that direction, the carefully controlled breathing and movements that hide any outward signs of anxiety, the steadying heart rate and loosening of tightened muscles after he greets Foggy — these draw his attention as in his memory Stick instructs him on identifying snipers and spies. 

He splits his attention as Foggy talks, letting his senses expand out further than he usually would at dinner, trying to scan the room for anyone else who might be behaving oddly, maintain focus on the person he had first noticed, behave normally enough to keep suspicions down, and sweep the nearby buildings for threats — especially his own. Is there someone in his apartment? Can he take Foggy there, get him to safety? 

He’s spread himself too thin, knows it when someone spills a bit of ground cumin in the kitchen and he flinches as if slapped as it blooms out in a powdery cloud, as he tastes it mix in the air with the steam rising off dishes on the stovetop, smells it settle in the hair of the cooks and waiters, as he can almost feel the individual particles against his skin as it falls into grimy corners. 

He snaps back into himself, starts again with narrower focus this time — just Foggy and the person by the door, now bent over their phone — Texting? Writing notes?

As Foggy talks, Matt nods and grins, trying to ascertain whether he’s being paranoid or appropriately cautious. Sometimes that discord between breathing and heart rate is nothing more than a sign of a person who lives with chronic anxiety, who is used to balancing the symptoms of a body at the edge of fight or flight. He doesn’t want to attack a person because he misinterpreted a minor panic attack. 

But there’s something off about them, he thinks, something not quite fitting in the bustling, comfortable restaurant. Something that couldn’t be explained by an anxiety disorder. He can’t explain it, not in words, but he can feel it in his fingers and at the back of his neck, a suspicion, an instinct. There’s something about how they move, about how they smell, something familiar and yet wrong in this place.

That’s not enough for court, he knows. He has no passable evidence, no reasonable doubt. But his work as Daredevil has always been for when he can’t limit himself to court, has always been for assuaging his fears and compulsions. He pushes down the familiar bloom of guilt and shame and... considers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thequeerwithoutfear.tumblr.com 
> 
> matt doesn't know natasha so he doesn't know nat's gender or pronouns so he doesn't assume them based on what he can sense because that's gross [peace sign emoji]

**Author's Note:**

> thequeerwithoutfear.tumblr.com


End file.
